How to Plant Lotus Rhizomes Without Snapping the Growing Tip

What you are actually holding

A lotus planting piece is a length of rhizome made of two or three swollen segments joined at narrow waists, with a pale, blunt, slightly curved point at one end. That point is the growing tip, and it is the entire plant. Every leaf, every flower and every new segment of root you will harvest in autumn comes out of it. The fat segments behind it are nothing but a food store to push the tip into growth. If the tip breaks off, the segments will sit in the mud and rot, and the season is over before it starts.

The tip is not tough. It has the texture of a wet bean sprout and snaps under the weight of the rhizome itself if you lift the piece by one end. Carry the rhizome flat on two open hands, the way you would carry a full tray, and set it down before you do anything else. Do not hold it by the tip, do not let it hang, and do not wrap it tightly.

Check the piece before it goes in the water. A sound rhizome is firm, cream to tan, with unbroken skin and sealed ends where it was cut. Sunken gray patches, a sour smell, or a cut end that weeps cloudy liquid all mean rot, and rot spreads down the whole rhizome underwater within a week or two. Discard anything soft. A rhizome that has been allowed to dry out and wrinkle is also finished, because the segments are hollow chambers and once they take in air they will not re-hydrate.

Handle the growing tip as if it were a raw egg with a cracked shell. More first-year lotus crops are lost to a snapped tip during planting than to anything the weather does later.

Wait for warm water, not a warm afternoon

Lotus is planted in spring, but the trigger is water temperature rather than air temperature. Plant when the water in the container has been holding above 60F (15C) for a week and the nights are no longer near freezing. In cold water the tip simply sits there, and cold wet dormant tissue is exactly the condition rot wants. Waiting an extra fortnight for warmth costs nothing; planting into 50F (10C) water often costs the whole rhizome.

If your rhizome arrives before the water is ready, keep it flat in a shallow tray of water at room temperature, out of direct sun, changing the water every couple of days. It can wait a week or two like this. Coiled thin roots and a small rolled leaf may appear, which is a good sign, but it also means the piece is now even more fragile to move.

Setting the rhizome in the mud

The planting position is horizontal and shallow. The rhizome lies along the surface of the mud with the growing tip raised very slightly, the way a boat sits with its bow up, and only a thin skim of soil over the fat segments. It is never stood on end and never pushed down into the soil like a potato.

1. Fill and settle the soil first Put six to eight inches (15 to 20 cm) of heavy garden loam or plain topsoil in the container, wet it to a thick porridge, and let it settle overnight until the surface is smooth and the water above it has cleared. Planting into loose dry soil buries the tip when the soil slumps.
2. Cut a shallow channel Draw a finger through the mud to make a groove the length of the rhizome and about two inches (5 cm) deep. Make the groove slightly shallower at the tip end so the tip will sit higher than the rest of the piece.
3. Lay the rhizome in, tip last Lower the piece flat into the groove with both hands, with the cut end deepest and the growing tip pointing toward the middle of the container rather than at the wall, so the runner has room to travel. Never press on the tip.
4. Cover the fat segments only Draw about two inches (5 cm) of mud over the swollen segments to hold them down, and leave the last inch (2.5 cm) of the growing tip uncovered and just proud of the mud. Buried tips rot; floating rhizomes never root.
5. Weight it if it floats The segments are full of air chambers and will try to lift. If the piece rises, lay a smooth stone across the cut end, well away from the tip, and remove it once the plant is anchored a few weeks later.
6. Flood gently to two inches (5 cm) Add water slowly onto a plate or your hand so the stream does not blast the mud off. Keep the water only two to three inches (5 to 8 cm) above the soil at first. Warm shallow water starts growth fastest; you deepen it later as leaves rise.

One rhizome per container, and never near a pond

Give a single planting piece its own container. Two rhizomes in one tub spend the summer running into each other, and in autumn you lift a knotted mass of thin roots instead of fat segments. Room is what makes a lotus root thick, and a crowded lotus grows leaves instead.

This plant escapes. A single runner that finds its way over the rim of a tub into wet ground, or a container placed in a pond so it can overflow, will colonise open water and become effectively impossible to remove by hand. Grow it in a sealed, freestanding container on hard ground, keep the rim several inches above the surrounding soil level, and never sink the container into a natural pond or a ditch that connects to one. Check the rim each time you top up the water in high summer and push any runner that has reached the edge back down into the mud.

Write down the planting date, the water temperature on that day, and which end of the container the tip was pointing. In autumn you will be digging blind into opaque mud, and knowing which direction the runner set off in is the difference between lifting whole segments and cutting them in half with the first push of the spade.